The five did not appear in court on Friday. Judge Andrew Chan will hand down sentencing at a later date.

Occupy protests in Mong Kok. File Photo: HKFP/Tom Grundy.

The Mong Kok protest camp was cleared on November 25, 2014, when bailiffs implemented an injunction order with the assistance of police. Over a hundred people were arrested for not vacating the area.

Andrew Chan wrote in his 17-page judgment that Siew, Man, Yung and Chan Pak-tao had no intention of leaving the occupy site.

Chan said Siew, who took photos and wrote articles during the Occupy movement, was acting as “both a documentary reporter and a protestor.” However, Siew said during the trial that he did not want to use the identity of a journalist as an excuse to avoid being arrested.

Regarding Yung, Chan wrote that the slogan on the back of his T‑shirt – which said “rather die for speaking out, than to live and be silent” – “indicated his intention and described his involvement beyond doubt.”

Lou, the only one of the five who gave evidence in person, told the court that he only came to know the material terms of the injunction at around 1 pm that day. Lou said he was not able to leave the area since he was blocked by the crowd.

But Andrew Chan wrote that Lou chose to remain in the area and interfered with the administration of justice.

Photo: HKFP/Ellie Ng.

All five defendants’ presence in Mong Kok were “factually calculated” to delay the bailiffs from clearing the scene, Chan wrote.

He added that a criminal penalty would be appropriate: “On the day in question, standing in the middle of Argyle Street were a huge presence of local and international media and a large contingent of police officers. If the respondents did as what the applicant had alleged, that in my view was sufficiently flagrant or serious to warrant the imposition of punitive sanction,” he wrote.

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